Poland

H&M will launch online stores in eight different countries in Europe during 2015. The new online markets will be Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. H&M’s online stores are already available in eleven European countries.

The ecommerce industry in Central Europe has shown an average growth rate of nearly 23% last year. That is a better development than the average European growth of 17.5%. Together, the countries in Central Europe generated online sales worth 93.3 billion euros. Back in 2012 total sales were worth 75.9 billion euros.

Every country in Europe has its own set of things you should take into account when selling online over there. This is of course also the case for Poland, one of Europe's fastest-growing ecommerce markets. Here's what you should know about running an ecommerce site in Poland.

Global investors are looking with increasing interest to the ecommerce industry in Eastern Europe. The growth and trends in this region attracts the attention of international ecommerce players and investors. For example in Turkey, there's a raised interest of investors, mostly in the clothing sectors.

Prologis, the world's biggest industrial-building owner, is constructing more and more warehouses in Europe as the demand for goods sold online keeps growing. Prologis has started projects in Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia and is looking for more opportunities in Germany and the Netherlands.

The American toy retailer Toys"R"Us has announced the launch of an ecommerce site in Poland, adding to its growing portfolio of online stores all over the world. Toys"R"Us already has eight physical stores and the web store will extends the brand’s reach to more Polish consumers.

UPS has announced the expansion of UPS My Choice and the UPS Access Point network to 15 additional countries, including 12 in Europe. With these two services, online shoppers and global retailers have new personalized solutions to manage residential package deliveries.

Wrangler has some big plans for this fall: it will launch an online store in ten European countries as well as launch a campaign with Finnish racing driver Kimi Raikkönen to boost sales. At the end of this year, Wrangler's online has to available in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland. France and Belgium will follow later.

The ecommerce industry in Poland grew by 25 percent in 2013. It was worth 26 billion Polish zloty, or 6.3 billion euros, last year and is expected to grow to more than 22 billion euros in 2020. This is equal to a compound annual growth rate of approximately 19 percent. This is apparent from a study by market researcher PMR.

Facebook is a very popular social network amongst European online retailers. Except for the United Kingdom, where online retailers are more active on Twitter. But Twitter is however still less popular in the UK than in other countries like Germany or Spain. These two countries have the most social media savvy online retailers, as 90% of them are on Facebook and 80% are on Twitter.

As is common nowadays in almost all developed countries, Polish internet users also don’t limit themselves to a PC when making a purchase online. There is even one in every 25 users who has at least once done some online shopping using their e-book reader! Let’s have a look at the way Polish internet users are shopping online these days.

PierreRiu.com launched only two weeks ago and the luxury fashion online store has already launched in Poland, Italy and Germany. And it's not like inhabitants from other European countries have to suffer as PierreRiu.com operates in all European Union countries. The buy & sell platform enables users to buy and sell luxury clothes and accessories online.

Of all Polish internet users, 24 percent do their grocery shopping online. This number indicates a growing popularity among Polish shoppers as two years ago only 8 percent of the internet users declared they had some experience with online grocery shopping. Last year this number grew to 13 percent.

Poland is one of Europe's fastest growing ecommerce markets and it's also a very strategic geographical location for those who would like to expand further into the Eastern European market. Software development company Dotcom River took a very good look at the ecommerce market in Poland and released a study, of which we'll show the most important results.

In the United Kingdom there are recently several activities employed and online platforms launched aimed at boosting trade with Central and Eastern Europe. A new UK-based ecommerce site for example aims to alert local companies about business opportunities in Romania, while another initiative is focused on selling British food online in Poland.